


Turn Back the Clock Once More

by madman_with_a_warehouse



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, More characters to be added later, Smoaking Canary, Time Loop, Time Travel, well it was supposed to be closer to February but... 20gayteen ya'll
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-03-17 16:21:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13662717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madman_with_a_warehouse/pseuds/madman_with_a_warehouse
Summary: Felicity keeps reliving the two months leading up to her death. Every time a masked vigilante tries and fails to save her.





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This should be a multi-chapter but I have no schedule as of yet. Hope you enjoy!

Felicity reached the edge of the roof and knew she was trapped. There were no nearby roofs she could feasibly jump to and the only exit was the one she just came through - the one the archer would follow her through within a matter of seconds. She had almost wondered if it was still worth getting this scared over, but when she looked down - yeah, no matter how many times she’d gone through this, the awful swooping sensation still hadn’t gone away. 

The archer walked through the door onto the roof and Felicity glanced at her watch. Right on schedule. _She _would arrive in 34 seconds and Felicity would be dead in 36. The vigilante always arrived too late to save her from falling off the ledge. Felicity hoped the impact killed her; bleeding out had always seemed like a particularly gruesome way to go, then again she’d never been conscious longer than hitting the ground.__

__She reached into her pocket to grab the device that had?s saved her life the last six times this happened. Felicity was sure one of these days it wouldn’t be in there and she wouldn’t wake up. She breathed in a sigh of relief when her hand is met with cold metal._ _

__The door opened and The Canary burst through in all her glory. This was wrong. She was early. She didn’t stop running. She just kept coming at Felicity as the archer raised his bow._ _

__“You really thought you were able to stop this?” he taunted._ _

__Felicity gripped the machine tighter and took a step forward, “You’d think I’d get it by now right?” she said with a bitter smile. The first and second arrows hit less than a second apart. The blood coated her stomach and hands and the familiar mix of pain and numbness had spread to her legs as The Canary reached for her. It didn’t matter, it was far too late; the arrows had found their mark and Felicity didn’t have enough strength to keep from stumbling backward. The Canary tried to grab her but Felicity was dead weight. They fell off the edge together._ _

__And then she woke up._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just edited this a bit. The next chapter should be up tomorrow


	2. Familiarity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Loop starts again. This time with a new player

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Two (finally) yay! A big thank you goes out to my beta and wonderful sibling inklingdancer

The phantom pain in her stomach was, unfortunately, familiar to her by now, the cycle relatively unchanged regardless of Felicity’s attempts to destabilize it. Her mother always called on Friday night to complain about the jackass at the casino who had spilled nachos down her dress and to repeatedly ask if Felicity was still single (even if she had started dating someone, the likelihood of her telling her mom before they had been together for many, many months was zero), Felicity’s favorite takeout place was always closed on the 16th due to religious reasons, and she always chose to try to stop Merlyn’s plans and always ended up dead doing so. 

During her second loop she had tried ignoring it and was buried by rubble from the earthquake; in the fourth she had moved to Central City and worked for the company that was massacred by the Dark Archer for their involvement in making the device; and in the fifth, she got caught in the crossfire between the Triad and Merlyn’s goons. All the other times it had been on that rooftop in the glades.

Same day, same time, same vigilante trying and failing to save her. 

Except this time, The Canary had almost… she had almost been there in time. While the pain was familiar, the echo of fingertips brushing against her was new and grounding. Maybe just this once she’d risk getting her hopes up.

* * *

Sara bolted upright with a gasp and a hand clenched around the knife she kept under her pillow. Her hand slowly loosened its grip when reality became less hazy. She felt like when she first got home - aware of everything and on a razor-sharp edge of paranoia. 

The dream, though not as disturbing as her usual nightmares - which usually starred her family dying - was far more vivid than she’d ever had. She clearly remembered running after the imposter in League garb, remembered the kid that called after her saying that more than one person had run up the stairs, and the woman whose last words weren’t laced with fear, even as arrows were aimed at her chest. She remembered grasping her arm just as the woman stumbled off the edge, taking Sara along with her and seeing the ground rise up towards her until she saw nothing at all.

After throwing on a tank top and jeans, her first stop was the clock tower. She had made plans with Sin to meet for breakfast a couple nights ago, and Sara wasn’t going to let an unsettling dream get in the way of her promise to the girl’s father.

“I told you we needed to get something to cover up that gaping hole.” Sin said dryly when she saw Sara suppress a shiver, she should have taken her jacket but she hasn’t needed it since the beginning of spring so this sudden cold spell is a bit of a shock. “It gets all drafty up here and October isn’t exactly warm.” Sara rolled her eyes; Sin said that every time.

“It’s almost May you can’t really expect me to- October?” Sara searched for her phone. She pulled it out of her pocket and she clicked the power button - sure enough - the date read October 10, 2012. There was a faint ringing in her ears. She’d had many unexplained things happen to her over the last several years but this just felt like a bad fever dream. The confused muttering and occasional cursing she let out wasn’t very loud, but Sin looked concerned, so obviously she could tell something was wrong.

“Sara? Are you okay? You look kinda pale.” 

Sara wanted to reassure her but the ringing in her ears had gotten so loud that she left the clocktower with barely a goodbye. She just needed to think. That or take her confusion out on the first criminal that was unlucky enough to cross her path.

It had been a week since she woke up after falling off the edge of a building (or maybe dreaming about it?) and she was no closer to knowing what happened to her. All she knew now is she was in October, she had memories of months that hadn’t happened yet, and that some of those memories were playing out in real time.

If there was one perk to apparently knowing the future, or a version fairly similar to the one that was currently going on, it was that stopping crime before it started had never been easier. Her nights as The Canary had been shorter and the only blood Sara had cleaned off her jacket had belonged to the people she’d taken down.

“So why have you been acting so jittery lately?” Laurel asked as they walked into the Merlyn Global building. The official reason was that Laurel needed to drop off some legal papers, but Sara knew the real reason was so Laurel could visit her boyfriend Tommy. A year into their relationship and they still hadn’t left the honeymoon phase. “You seemed to be in a really good place up until the last week or so, does it have something to do with,” she leaned in, “Your... extracurricular activities?”

The rooftop flashed before her. Running. Reaching for a hand. Being yanked down. Falling. The ground getting closer and closer. She shook her head. “Not exactly. I’ve just been having a lot of-” 

“I know. Thank you so much for meeting with me, Mrs. Hendricks. Mr. Merlyn sends his warmest regards.” The level of sarcasm dripping from that one word would have made Sara turn around even if the familiar voice didn’t. She saw a flash of blonde walking into the elevator away from the older woman she was talking to and involuntarily took a step forward. 

“-Deja Vu.” Sara turned back to her sister, “I’m sorry, I think I saw someone I know. Is it okay if I…?” She was sprinting to the elevator bank before Laurel could answer. As unlikely as it was, if anyone knew something about the night on the roof, it would be her. “Wait! Hold the door!” Sara hopped into the elevator just as the doors were closing and smirked at the rather flustered looking woman on the inside.

“Hi, I’m Sara; I think I know you from somewhere. This might sound weird, but have you fallen off any good rooftops lately?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we'll see when chapter three comes out... hopefully before September but who knows? I don't. Bye!

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed. I just edited this a bit. The next chapter will be up tomorrow.


End file.
